Have you ever thought that a 12-year-old boy cannot earn more money than an adult can dream of? Well, Benyamin Ahmed is about to prove you wrong.
Benyamin Ahmed is a 12-year-old from suburban London who has managed to make over $160,000 selling a collection of NFTs. The NFT collection is inspired by an 8-bit stock image of a blue whale.
What exactly is an NFT?
Some of you may be thinking, “Wait, wait. Wait a minute. What is an NFT? Good question.
NFT is an acronym that stands for non-fungible token. This may have raised another question, specifically about what non-expendable means.
According to The Verge, something is considered non-fungible if “it is unique and cannot be substituted for something else.” The article cites a unique business card as an example. Swap it for another card and you’ll end up with something else.
How is this similar to cryptocurrencies? “It is generally built using the same type of programming as cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, but there the similarity ends,” according to Forbes.
How is that? Cryptocurrencies are fungible, which means that one bitcoin can be exchanged for another bitcoin. NFTs, meanwhile, are tied to Ethereum in the sense that the Ethereum blockchain supports NFTs.
NFT and digital art
The Verge report notes that NFTs can be “anything digital,” including drawings and music. According to Forbes, NFTs can be affected by digital objects such as collectibles, GIFs, video game skins, and even branded sneakers.
Even a tweet can be an NFTas demonstrated by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who sold the first tweet as an NFT.
Currently, however, the hype around NFTs revolves around “using technology to sell digital art.”
Benyamin Ahmed’s “Weird Whales” NFT collection from 12 years ago
This brings us to Londoner Benyamin Ahmed, 12, who made over $160,000 selling a collection of NFTs.
According to Decrypt, young Benyamin’s interest in NFTs began when the 12-year-old thought “it was cool to do push-ups online.” He then developed an interest in digital art style NFT collections such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Benyamin Ahmed’s newfound interest in these NFT collections prompted him to create his own..
The 12-year-old’s NFT collection was called Weird Whales, which Decrypt describes as “a set of pixelated whale icons inspired by a stock image.”
Each Weird Whale image has its own distinctive features that can make it more rare and valuable than others in the collection. Decrypt cites the 120th image in the collection, which sold for $6,000.
This image was also ranked as the eighth rarest NFT strange whale out of a total of 3,350 available, according to the Decrypt report.